Thursday, October 3, 2013

One of Italy's biggest migrant disasters of the last 20 years left at least hundreds dead and scores missing in migrant boat sinking on Thursday. The boat carrying about 500 asylum seekers from Eritrea and Somalia went down in flames after the desperate migrants tried to alert fishing boats by lighting a blanket and inadvertently setting fire to leaking fuel. Three hundreds are feared dead.

"We were jam-packed, we couldn't even move," some of the 150 survivors told ANSA. "We started jumping into the water when the flames got too high. The fishing boats didn't come and get us". A member of the local fishing fleet said: "We didn't see a thing. If we had, we would have rushed to the scene, of course we would".